May 30, 2008 at 11:50:48

Hear what Roger Mahony does not want you to hear. Bishop who confronts sex and crime in the Church to speak in LA 6/12

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By Kay Ebeling (about the author) Page 6 of 7 page(s)

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It is inevitable that many will react to the sexual abuse of minors according to older values rather than with a new mind to meet a new problem.

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A thousand years of secrecy
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“Those older values have for a thousand years included secrecy, the covering over of problems and the protection of the good name of the church.”

Robinson writes from an international perspective:

More from Robinson’s book”

There was a wide variety of responses to abuse within each nation.

Even now I cannot see evidence that a true confrontation of the problem is occurring. The staff of those clinical facilities specially set up for the treatment of priests and religious who have offended against minors have not been asked by Roman authorities for their findings on the causes of abuse.

The bishops of the world have not been asked to coordinate research and study within their own territories.

Until basic steps such as these are taken, I find it impossible to believe that church authorities are determined to confront rather than simply manage the problem.

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Celibacy is not the sole cause
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Excerpt continued:

Celibacy is not the sole cause of sexual abuse by priests and religious. It would actually be good if it were, for then, by the simple expedient of abolishing celibacy, one could abolish all abuse. But even if celibacy were abolished tomorrow, there is every reason to believe that the problem would not disappear.

One of the best statements I have encountered concerning the causes of abuse, the one with the greatest promise of showing us the way forward, is that child abuse, by priests, religious or, for that matter, anyone else in the community, is most likely to occur when three factors come together:

an unhealthy psychological state, unhealthy ideas concerning power and sex, and an unhealthy environment or community in which a person lives.

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HE IS TALKING DIRECTLY TO ME HERE:
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In almost every case there is evidence of careful selection and ‘grooming’ of a victim, of planning of the circumstances, and of care taken to ensure that the victim does not speak to others of what has happened, so it is impossible to dismiss paedophile activity as the result of a ‘sickness’ for which the offender is not responsible.

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Book Recommendations for "Pedophiles Roman Catholic Church"

Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis
by Philip Jenkins

$25.00
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Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA